Drawing 2 (top centre left): Column base seen near Trajan’s Forum

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Italian Renaissance Drawings
- Codex Coner: Architecture and Antiquarianism in early sixteenth-century Rome, c.1513-15 with seventeenth-century additions (100 folios)
  - SM volume 115/136

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Reference number

SM volume 115/136b

Purpose

Drawing 2 (top centre left): Column base seen near Trajan’s Forum

Aspect

Partial section with perspectival view, and measurements

Scale

To an approximate scale of 1:6

Inscribed

prope. arcem/ militum. (‘Close to the soldiers’ fortress [i.e. the Torre delle Milizie]’); [measurements]

Signed and dated

c.1513/14
Datable to c.1513/14

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks

Hand

Bernardo della Volpaia

Notes

This base, with two toruses, two scotias and twin astragals, is similar but a little smaller than the one from the Pantheon portico (Drawing 1) and was seen in the vicinity of the Torre delle Milizie which is above the site of the Basilica Ulpia of Trajan’s Forum. No other drawings of it are known. Ashby identified it not unreasonably as being for one of the monolithic granite columns on the basilica’s external façade. With a plinth measuring 2 braccia and 36 minutes (1.52m) in width, it is very similar in size and design to one seen near Trajan’s Column that appears on an earlier page (Fol. 80r/Ashby 134 Drawing 2), which could have also come from the basilica. Although what was known about Trajan’s forum at this time is extremely unclear, a drawing once attributed (wrongly) to Fra’ Giocondo appears to show what could well be the basilica with its projecting external façade.

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [‘Pseudo-Giocondo’] Florence, GDSU, 1537 Av (Bartoli 1914–22, 6, p. 13)

Literature

Ashby 1904, p. 67
Census, ID 46875

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Codex Coner has been made possible through the generosity of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Berlin.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk